/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 * 
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 * 
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

package com.kpx.app.utils.encrypt;

/**
 * <p>
 * Provides the highest level of abstraction for Encoders. This is the sister
 * interface of {@link Decoder}. Every implementation of Encoder provides this
 * common generic interface whic allows a user to pass a generic Object to any
 * Encoder implementation in the codec package.
 * </p>
 *
 * @author Apache Software Foundation
 * @version $Id: Encoder.java 1075406 2011-02-28 16:18:26Z ggregory $
 */
public interface Encoder {

    /**
     * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content as an Object. The
     * Objects here may just be <code>byte[]</code> or <code>String</code>s
     * depending on the implementation used.
     *
     * @param source An object ot encode
     * @return An "encoded" Object
     * @throws EncoderException an encoder exception is thrown if the encoder experiences a
     *                          failure condition during the encoding process.
     */
    Object encode(Object source) throws Exception;
}